Roy Hodgson admits his goal-shy strikers are the reason behind Fulham’s poor start to the campaign.

Fulham have managed just four goals in their opening six Premier League games and that leaves them at the wrong end of the table.

But Hodgson, who missed out on a £10million bid for Peter Crouch in the summer, insists that Bobby Zamora and Andy Johnson will deliver the goals.

Hodgson said: “It is a problem in the sense that to win games you have to score goals and, against Arsenal, once again we created the chances but didn’t score them.

“It’s not something that bothers me in the longer term because I know if we continue to play as we are playing, with the chances we are creating, we will score the goals.

“Maybe on another occasion two or even three of those very good chances we created would have been scored and therefore you’d be saying: ’you scored as many goals in one game as you’ve scored all season.’

“I’m really rather happy with the way Zamora and Johnson are playing together. If they can continue the next 30-odd games then they’ll create a lot problems for other defences, perhaps defences a little bit weaker than the Arsenal’s.”

Hodgson also saw Damien Duff limp off after just nine minutes with a calf injury but the Fulham boss insisted the Republic of Ireland winger is not injury prone despite his many problems in the past few seasons.

Hodgson added: “He’s played for the last year without any injuries. He’s played a lot of games in his career and the injuries he had have been serious injuries and they put you out of the game for a long while.”